Beyond The Lies

by Abbi Cook

  “Oh. Okay.”

  As I dry off, Sophie turns her back to me and slips the shirt over her head. It falls to the middle of her thighs, and when she spins around to show me, I can’t help but laugh at how tiny she looks in it.

  “It’s like a shirt made for a giant,” she says with a giggle before lifting the sleeve to her nose. “It smells like you.”

  I knot the towel around my hips. Curious, I look at her and ask, “What does it smells like me mean?”

  Sophie shrugs like it’s nothing, but then a shy smile lights up her face and her cheeks turn an adorable shade of light pink. “I don’t know. It just smells like you.”

  As sweet as that sounds, the second my gaze falls on her cut up arms, my rage pushes every other feeling out of me.

  “Sit down on the side of the tub. I need to wrap up your arms.”

  I look up to see her smile fade as she does as I say. My hands begin to shake I’m so full of anger that Tap hurt her like that. I turn away and grab the gauze pads and tape from the vanity, knocking the antibiotic cream into the sink as I stand there fighting the urge to rush over to Tap’s and kill him.

  “They don’t really hurt anymore.”

  Nodding, I avoid meeting her gaze as I crouch down in front of her. “I need to put some of this ointment on so your arms don’t get infected. It won’t hurt, but it’ll be cold.”

  My hand hovers over the arm with the words SLUT and BITCH carved into it, and when she doesn’t respond, I look up and see her force a smile. Fuck, I hate this. I’m not what she needs at this moment, but I’m all she’s got.

  The cream drops onto her skin, making her jump, but I can’t focus on anything but this task because if I let myself feel anything right now, I’ll spin right the fuck out of control. I hear her take a deep breath when I gently wrap the pad around her forearm, but I don’t lift my head to look at her. I don’t want to see the pain in her eyes as I cover those words.

  I tape up the gauze on her right arm and then repeat it all on the left one, my hands shaking as I say nothing because I can’t find the words to say. If she’s permanently scarred from this…

  Standing, I toss the antibiotic ointment and tape into the sink and mumble, “Those will be fine. Don’t worry.”

  It takes everything inside me not to throw the bathroom door open I’m so fucking angry, but I don’t want her to see that. Her footsteps stop behind me as I walk toward the bedroom, and I turn around to see her standing near the coffee table. Looking down toward her legs, she tugs on the bottom of my T-shirt.

  “Aren’t you coming to sleep in the bed?”

  “I wasn’t sure I should.”

  She won’t look at me. I put this doubt in her mind. If only I could have been the gentle soul she needs instead of a man who runs mainly on rage and hate. She isn’t sure she’s anything more than my captive again because of me. I can’t let our time end like this.

  “Come here, Sophie.”

  She slowly walks over to me and stops without looking up. “It’s okay if we go back to the way it was when I got here.”

  Lifting her chin with my finger, I shake my head and smile. “No. You’ll sleep in there with me.”

  “I just thought…you seemed to be awkward about things.”

  What I felt awkward about is nothing she should worry about. It wasn’t awkwardness either. It was pure rage, but I didn’t mean to let her see that. She doesn’t deserve to suffer because of what that asshole did to her.

  He’s the only one who’ll suffer.

  “You belong in there with me, Sophie.”

  She stares up at me, her dark eyes wide. “But I figured since you didn’t want to do anything in the shower and you wouldn’t even look at me when you put the bandages on my arms…”

  “I told you I’d never let anyone hurt you. I didn’t live up to that promise, and for that, I can’t forgive him. Or me. You’re my responsibility, and I should have protected you. I’m sorry for today, little one.”

  Her brown eyes fill with tears, and taking a step toward me, she reaches for my hand. “You have no blame for today, King. Neither of us do. But I’m okay. I never doubted you’d come for me. I’m stronger than I look.”

  She has no idea how strong she truly is. I’ve never met a woman like her, and the very idea that this is the last night I’ll ever have with her makes me wish things could be different, even as I know they can’t.

  Sophie and I belong in two different worlds. She’s as good as I am bad, as kind as I am brutal. But for one final night, we’ll bridge those two worlds.

  “No matter how strong you are, you should have never had to deal with any of this,” I say as I lead her to my bedroom.

  Behind me, she says in a tiny voice I barely hear, “I promised myself I’d hate you forever for what you did.”

  Turning to look back at her, I get the feeling she has more to say, so I don’t tell her I hated that I had to do that. What would it matter anyway? I did what I did, and like with everything else I’ve done in my life, I’ll have to pay the price for that someday.

  “I understand why you did it, though,” she says in that same tiny voice. Looking away, she adds, “I’m not sure why I didn’t go on hating you, to be honest. Maybe it’s this place, or maybe it’s you, but I don’t know if things would have happened between us if I wasn’t here like I am.”

  The way she avoids using the actual word makes me smile. I glance down at our hands still joined together and then up at her.

  “You’re a captive. Hostage. Whichever you like. You don’t have to be afraid to say what this is. I’ve never had any delusions that this is anything but two people who never wanted to be part of Tap’s fucked up plan getting stuck together.”

  Hurt settles into her expression. I didn’t want her to take that to mean what it sounded like.

  Shaking her head, she says, “Please don’t think I hate you now. That isn’t what I meant at all.”

  Fuck. Suddenly, neither one of us seems to be able to say what we really mean.

  I feel her fingers tighten around my hand, but I ease it from her hold and shrug. “You’d have every right to hate me and everyone here. You never should have ended up here in the first place.”

  “Would you think I’m crazy if I said I’m not sorry it happened?”

  Throwing my head back, I let out a full laugh. “Yes.”

  Sophie’s sense of humor has made me laugh out loud before, but as I sit down on the bed, I notice she hasn’t moved. Her face shows she didn’t intend for that to be funny.

  “Why do you seem so different tonight? If it’s not because of what Tap did, then what is it? First, you can barely stand me touching you in the bathroom, and now when I tell you that I’m not sorry I got to be here with you, your response is to laugh at me. Why are you being like this?”

  As if her question makes something explode inside me, I snap, “Like what? Like someone who’s about to lose the only…What do you want from me, Sophie? What are you expecting me to act like?”

  My outburst surprises her, and she steps back away from the bed. At first, she doesn’t know what to say and just stares at me with a look that’s a mixture of confusion and hurt. She opens her mouth to say something, but closes it, like she doesn’t want to let whatever’s inside her out.

  But I want to hear it. I want everything from her tonight. The good. The bad. Whatever she has left, I want. It’s all I’ll have of her once she’s gone.

  “Say it, Sophie. Whatever it is, say it.”

  “I’m not just what these words say on my skin.”

  It’s a question as much as a statement, a quiet plea for me to be the person she needs after all she’s been through. Staring up at her, my chest hurts from all the anger coursing through me and how much I wish I wasn’t who I am.

  I stand and take the few steps toward her until my body nearly touches hers. She doesn’t look up at me, and I wrap my arms around her so all she can feel is me protecting her like I’m supposed to.<
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  And then the tears I knew needed to come out finally start. As she sobs against my chest, I say nothing because nothing’s good enough. She needs actions, not hollow words from the likes of me.

  Her body trembles against mine, and with each sob, I hold her tightly to me.

  Against my skin, she whispers, “I hate that I’m crying.”

  She shouldn’t hate crying. She should hate me. She should hate everyone at this fucking place.

  I smooth my hand down over her dark hair and press a kiss to the top of her head. “You’re going to be okay, Sophie. You’re strong.”

  Looking up at me, her mouth turns down into a frown that makes me wish I didn’t say whatever is making her so unhappy. I want to see that cute little pout or that smile of hers that lights up everything around her. Not this frown.

  “I think there’s something wrong with me because I’m going to miss you, King. I don’t know what to do with that. And then you act like you’re going to miss me, and all I can think is how unlucky we both are.”

  She stops talking and takes a deep breath. For a moment, she tries to give me a smile but fails. Stepping away from me, she leaves me standing there wishing so many things at that moment but most of all wishing she was still in my arms.

  “At least if one person is lucky, the one with that person gets to enjoy some benefits from that luck, but if neither person is lucky, like us, then no one can be happy.”

  I walk around her and sit on the edge of the bed. She turns to face me, and I reach out and run my fingers along the bottom of my T-shirt that hangs to the middle of her thighs while I think about what she said about luck. I’d never thought of it like that, but she’s right. We’re not lucky, and neither one of us will be happy after tonight.

  But for one night more, we can find all the happiness there is to be had for us here.

  Looking up at her, I try to hide how much I’m going to miss Sophie. “Come here.”

  As she climbs onto my lap, I slide my arms around her body and pull her close to me. I want to commit the way she feels to my memory, to impress it onto my mind so I can’t forget when she’s gone and I’m alone in this bed once again.

  “All I can think is why did this happen? If we weren’t supposed to ever have a chance to be happy together, why would the universe bring us together like this?” she whispers into my ear.

  I tilt my head back and look up into those brown eyes so full of sadness. “I don’t know. Maybe all the happiness we get is tonight and the other times we’ve had here.”

  “That’s not fair. Why would two people find their way to one another only to have it end so soon?”

  And right there, right in those words, the difference between our two worlds couldn’t be more obvious. To Sophie, we found our way to one another, like somehow we were meant to be. To me, she was forced from her life and into mine.

  I like the tenderness in her idea of us, though. I’ll miss that the most about having her here with me. For a short time, she brought something kind and sweet to my life. As much as I can’t help but be hard and brutal, having a gentle soul waiting here for me each day made me wish things were different.

  But they aren’t.

  “We only have this night, Sophie,” I say, cradling her beautiful face in my hands. She closes her eyes, and I add, “No regrets.”

  And just like that, the frown turns into that pout I love.

  “One more night, and then what?” she asks, forcing me to admit the truth out loud for the first time tonight.

  “And then you’ll go home to your life and not be foolish enough to run alone at night, even in a safe neighborhood. You’ll ask your uncle to send one of his guys over to your house to make sure you have locks that keep bad men out.”

  “And I’ll wish I didn’t meet you in this place surrounded by these people,” she says, finishing my thought with her own.

  I kiss that sexy pouty mouth and pull her hard to me, wanting to keep her as close as I can until I have to give her up. My tongue slips between her lips and teases hers as thoughts of everything I want to do to her fill my mind. I want her to leave me with no doubts how I felt about her. Never again will she wonder if any man had ever been so consumed with her that he wondered how he’d live without her when she was gone.

  Her hands roam over my skin, exciting every inch of me she touches. It’s like my body knows this may be its last real chance to feel truly alive. Not that farce it’s experienced for so many years but real emotions and real reactions that only a woman can bring out in a man like me.

  Sophie breaks our kiss, tearing her mouth from mine, and leans back away from me. I open my eyes to see her shaking her head.

  “This isn’t fair,” she says, fighting back tears.

  “Life isn’t fair.”

  “I hate this.”

  Pulling her to me, I kiss her with everything I have inside me and whisper against her lips, “I love this. And I love how from this point on, you’re always going to know that in a world full of people, I couldn’t think of anything else but being inside you whenever you were around.”

  “I don’t want to think about how I’ll be when you’re not around, King. For tonight, the entire world exists here, in this bedroom between just the two of us.”

  “Then no more regrets,” I say before I lay back onto the bed and pull her down on top of me.

  She rolls her hips and her pussy glides over the front of the towel covering my hard on. With a giggle, she looks down between us and shakes her head.

  “How is that towel still on you?”

  I shrug and lift her off me just enough to slide it from around me. “It’s not anymore, so feel free to go back to what you were doing before.”

  “You mean this?” she asks and then sits up on my hips to glide her wet pussy over my now uncovered cock.

  “Exactly that,” I say, pressing my hands into her hips and holding her still. “But I think that’s enough foreplay.”

  Sophie slides her tongue over her bottom lip and bites it as I angle my hips and sink deep into her ready cunt. She’s hot and wet, and it only takes seconds for me to get lost in how fucking good she feels around me.

  “Oooh, God…” she moans, dragging her nails down over my chest. “I almost don’t want to move it feels so good.”

  Flipping her over onto her back, I plunge into her and smile. “Now you don’t have a choice.”

  Her heels press into the small of my back, pushing hard to keep me where I am inside her, but I buck against them and pull out of her needy cunt. Sophie grabs my neck and tugs me down, kissing me hard.

  “Fuck me,” she moans against my lips. “Make it so I can never forget you, King.”

  And that’s all it takes to kick my body into overdrive. I thrust my hips forward and slam into her, desperate to mark every inch of that perfect cunt as mine. She cries out like it hurts, but I see all over her face how much she wants it even harder.

  That timid hostage who wondered if she liked a little pain with her pleasure doesn’t have to wonder anymore. She loves it hard, and I love giving it to her exactly that way.

  I plunge into her until there’s nothing left between us. I want to fuck away the reality that in just a few short hours, she’ll be leaving me. I want to forget how much that makes me hate everything in this goddamned world but her. I want her to feel every part of me and know it’s hers, every inch of who I am she possesses in a way I never believed possible.

  She may never hear those words from me, but I want her to know she became my entire world for the short time she was in my life.

  Her fingernails create streaks of pain across my back, tearing into me with every push of my cock into her. “I want to mark you like you’ve marked me,” she sobs as she scratches down my spine. “I want whoever there is after me to know I was here with you so you don’t forget.”

  I watch her fight back tears and fuck her with everything that exists inside me. All the rage. All the hate. All the love, only for her.


  “There’s no forgetting you, Sophie,” I groan out just before I come inside her.

  Dragging her fingernails down the front of me, she digs them into the skin on my hips and holds me still inside her. My cock twitches with each shot of cum into her, but the rest of my body doesn’t move.

  Her release follows a few seconds later, and she becomes more beautiful in those moments beneath me when she surrenders all she is to all I am. I watch her, filling my eyes with every tiny movement her mouth makes and how her brown eyes so wide when she looks up at me seem to beg for just a few more minutes of this perfect time between us.

  I collapse on top of her, and our drenched bodies press against one another as we struggle to catch our breath. My back stings from the tiny cuts her nails made when a drop of sweat trickles into them, the pain searing the memory of this last time with Sophie into me. I lay perfectly still with my eyes closed hoping to feel it again, but after a few minutes, it’s gone.

  Sophie runs her hand down over the back of my head and lets it come to rest on the nape of my neck. Her touch is soft, like already she’s not completely there with me anymore.

  But then she presses her lips to my ear in a kiss and whispers a single plea that tells me I haven’t lost her yet.

  “Please don’t forget me.”

  I hold her to me, her heartbeat pounding against my chest, as I try to imagine how I could do that. I don’t know how she did it, but she got under my skin. What started as a flash of decency I wasn’t sure still existed inside me anymore since I began working for Duke morphed into a way to protect an innocent from a psychotic asshole and then it turned into something much more.

  “Never.”

  As much as I wish she wouldn’t forget me, I know better. Sophie will return to a world full of school and parties with guys who have no idea how incredible she is. One day, she’ll find one of them interesting enough to give him a chance, and with every day he makes her smile, she’ll forget another moment we spent together.